Of the 16 candidates for Glendale City Council, school board, and the college’s board of trustees, at least six have records of bankruptcies, tax liens, credit card collections and other matters, a News-Press investigation has revealed.

A midyear budget surplus in Glendale led the City Council to set aside funds for a number of programs and initiatives on Tuesday, including an after-school sports and recreation program and nighttime park security.
According to a city report, the city&...

La Cañada and Glendale school officials will meet later this month to discuss the proposal Glendale Unified officials delivered late last year laying out terms for transferring the Sagebrush area of La Cañada Flintridge into the La Cañada Unified School...

President Obama has proposed spending $5 million in the upcoming federal budget on the West Coast’s earthquake early warning network, which would be a significant boost to the fledgling system if Congress approves the funding, according to the Los Angeles Times.
It is not the full $16.1 million a year needed to get the system up and running in as little as two years. But the backers of the system, Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Burbank) and Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), praised the president’s...

In the wake of the attack on the French satirical publication Charlie Hebdo and the deadly hostage crisis at a Paris kosher market last week, the Muslim community has once again been thrust into the public eye. This, of course, comes less than a month after the hostage crisis at a Sydney café, which was discussed in a previous In Theory question.
In a moving tribute to his brother, Ahmed Merabet, the police officer killed in the Charlie Hebdo attack, Malek Merabet said, "My brother was Muslim and he was...

The city of Glendale is taking the state government to court regarding a potential loss of more than $30 million in interest from loans it made decades ago to the now-defunct Redevelopment Agency.
When the agency was founded in the early 1970s, it received dozens of loans from City Hall for improvement and revitalization projects that were paid back to the general fund through property taxes.
When officials in Sacramento ended redevelopment in 2011, tens of millions were still owed to the city. To...

The so-called CRomnibus package is up for a vote in Congress this week – and supporters of NASA are cheering it on. If approved in the House and Senate, the federal spending appropriations for the 2015 fiscal year would give the space agency enough funding to send the Mars 2020 rover to the Red Planet on time and to invest in a flagship mission to Jupiter’s moon Europa, the Los Angeles Times reports.
The omnibus bill would provide NASA with $18.01 billion, which amounts to $549 million above...

Public officials in California would have to disclose more about their investments and who they do business with under a state Assembly bill introduced Monday as the legislature began a new session.
Assemblyman Mike Gatto (D-Glendale) introduced the measure, which would update and amend the state’s law requiring public officials to report their financial interests.
The measure would require officials who are invested in a business entity to “provide a thorough and detailed description”...

An annual credit agency report raised Glendale Water & Power’s outlook from negative to stable based on the utility’s plans to raise rates over the next several years.
Growing deficits and a series of botched rate hikes adopted in 2012 that undercharged or overcharged some customers dropped the utility’s score from AA to A+, a ranking that remains unchanged and impacts the department’s borrowing power.
But Fitch Ratings — which assigns the score and outlook — stated...

The Glendale College Community Foundation, responsible for raising funds to support academic programs, scholarships and facilities, recently reported its first-quarter donations compared to this time last year.
From July through September, the foundation collected $104,575 in donations, a bump up from the $95,224 it reported during that period in 2013.
The slight increase also indicates the foundation is on pace to collect more than the roughly $595,200 it did in donations during the last academic year....